Rooney Rule

The Rooney Rule is a National Football League policy that requires league teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs. It is sometimes cited as an example of affirmative action, though there is no quota or preference given to minorities in the hiring of candidates.[1][2][3] It was established in 2003, and variations of the rule are now in place in other industries.[4][5]

It was created as a reaction to the 2002 firings of head coaches Tony Dungy of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Dennis Green of the Minnesota Vikings, at a time when Dungy had a winning record and Green had just had his first losing season in ten years. Shortly afterwards, U.S. civil rights attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran released a study showing that black head coaches, despite winning a higher percentage of games, were less likely to be hired and more likely to be fired than their white counterparts. Former NFL players Kellen Winslow and John Wooten then put together a self-described “affinity group” of minority scouts, coaches, and front-office personnel, to advocate for the rule's creation.[6]

Its purpose was to ensure that minority coaches, especially African Americans, would be considered for high-level coaching positions. Until 1979, Fritz Pollard was the only minority head coach in NFL history (which was during the league's early years in the 1920s) and by the time the rule was implemented, only Tom Flores, Art Shell, Dennis Green, Ray Rhodes, Tony Dungy, and Herman Edwards had ever held head coaching jobs (only Dungy and Edwards were actively head coaching at the time of the rule's implementation, though Shell and Green would later return to head coaching). Dungy in particular had struggled for years before getting a head coaching job; he was often promoted as a head coaching candidate by Chuck Noll when Dungy was an assistant under Noll in the 1980s with the Steelers, but he would not become a head coach until 1996 when he took over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Since the Rooney Rule was established, several NFL franchises have hired African American head coaches, including the Steelers themselves, who hired Mike Tomlin before their 2007 season[7] (The Steelers, however, had already interviewed Ron Rivera who is a Hispanic minority to fulfill the requirement before interviewing Tomlin, and Rooney himself contends that Tomlin's hiring did not result from the Rule).[8] At the start of the 2006 season, the overall percentage of African American coaches had jumped to 22%, up from 6% prior to the Rooney Rule.[9]

The rule does not apply if an assistant coach has language in his contract guaranteeing him the head coaching job in case of an opening.[10] For example, this was the case when Mike Martz took over as head coach of the St. Louis Rams before the 2000 season. Also, the requirement does not apply if the assistant coach taking over the head position is a minority, as was the case with Mike Singletary and the San Francisco 49ers in late 2008.[11]

As of June 15, 2009[update], Rooney Rule requirements now apply to all searches for senior football operations positions within the NFL, regardless of a team's title for that position. It now also includes all ethnic minorities, not just African-Americans.

Currently, 5 of the 32 head coaches in the NFL are African-American, with 1 additional head coach who is Hispanic. Recently, legal scholars have advocated for extending the Rooney Rule to college football, where the number of minority head coaches hovers around 6%,[12] which is significantly lower than the 12.6% of the total US population which is African-American.

In 2003, the NFL fined the Detroit Lions $200,000 for failure to interview African-American candidates for the team's vacant head coaching job. After Marty Mornhinweg was fired, the Lions immediately hired former San Francisco 49ers head coach Steve Mariucci to replace him without interviewing any other candidates. The Lions claimed they attempted to interview other candidates but that the African-American candidates withdrew from interviews, believing Mariucci's hiring was inevitable.[13]

In the wake of no minority hirings to fill eight head coaching and seven general management vacancies following the conclusion of the 2012 NFL regular season, NFL Executive Vice president of Human Resources Robert Gulliver stated, "While there has been full compliance with the interview requirements of the Rooney Rule and we wish the new head coaches and general managers much success, the hiring results this year have been unexpected and reflect a disappointing lack of diversity."[14] Analysts have pointed the lack of interview offers for Baltimore Ravens'Offensive CoordinatorJim Caldwell, who, as head coach, led the Indianapolis Colts to a 14-2 2009 season along with winning the 2009 American Football Conference title before losing in Super Bowl XLIV, as evidence that the rule needs revision.[15] Some sports analysts have called upon the NFL to modify the Rooney Rule by requiring NFL teams to interview a minority candidate outside their respective organizations, and extending the rule to include interviews for offensive and defensive coordinators.[16]

In association football (soccer), players' representatives have been campaigning for a similar practise in England. Gordon Taylor, Chief Executive of the PFA (the players' trade union) said in September 2014 the sport "has a "hidden resistance" preventing black managers getting jobs", pointing out that "you see so many black players on the pitch, yet we have two black managers out of 92".[17]Garth Crooks, a prominent black former player, was especially scathing of the failure of the Football League (a large association of clubs below the top-tier Premier League) to pursue the matter, suggesting the league lacked courage.[18]